Online advertising network launches new service for social developers

Online advertising network Adknowledge has launched Social2Web, which enables developers to publish their Facebook games on standalone websites.

Social2Web also expands on current Facebook features to include lower credit card transaction rates, direct payments, display-ad revenue, and a broader range of monetisation options.

Social2Web also boasts features that have been removed from Facebook since social games rose to prominence, like incentivised invites.

"The elegance and power of Social2Web is that it allows game developers to acquire and monetise new users outside Facebook and still maintain their presence on Facebook ," said Social2Web director Bobby McFarland.

"Social2Web empowers social game developers to seize opportunities by accessing diverse customer sources beyond Facebook and using viral features that were integral in catapulting the initial growth of social games, but have largely been removed from Facebook. Social2Web also lowers developers' business risk by not becoming dependent on any single platform for growth and monetisation."

Sign up for The Daily Update and get the best of GamesIndustry.biz in your inbox.

The thing is, they may be allowing viral advertising, but the reason it worked so well on Facebook is that it was using a channel already in use. I don't think spamming email addresses is going to please people. And someone like Zynga could have created their own portal at any time, but why when there are established portals with 10s of millions of users already interacting with each other.
I doubt there are that many people who joined Facebook or other similar portals initially for the games, even though it may have evolved that it is now the main function some people use it for. So with a company portal, ok if you get people in you may have more options and better cuts, but how are you going to attract meaningful numbers in the first place. If someone wants to play a social game, they already know to look on Facebook or similar services.
But I may be proved wrong, so I'm interested to see what people working/investing in social gaming think of this.